JobsOhio Employees Get An 18 Percent Raise

The president of JobsOhio, the state's non-profit job creation company, is paid $621,322.62 a year. He's not the only one receiving a hefty paycheck.

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JobsOhio spokesman Matthew Englehart says the pay raises are warranted because the costs of benefits for employees rose by almost 25 percent. Eleven of those employees make more than $200,000 a year – more than Gov. Mike DeWine or Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.

Catherine Turcer with the watchdog group, Common Cause Ohio, says the state hasn’t retained jobs or attracted enough new jobs to warrant those high salaries.

“It is not clear that we are actually getting our money’s worth," Turcer says.

Englehart says in a written statement that the compensation packages for JobsOhio employees are comparable to those at other private nonprofit economic development organizations. He also says JobsOhio worked with companies to create more than 27,000 new jobs and $1.3 billion in payroll last year.

Still, since JobsOhio’s books are not open to public scrutiny, it isn’t possible to know the details behind those numbers. DeWine has said he wants to make JobsOhio more transparent but has not yet taken action to do that.

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As the Ohio House was going through multiple rounds of voting to pick a new speaker, the Senate passed a surprise amendment to expand the state auditor’s power to look into the workings of the privatized non-profit entity JobsOhio.